We’re at war with people who want to kill us and have wanted to for years. You can’t fight a war in the information age without mining data.

…the congress that authorized these programs (assuming they were properly authorized) did so for the protection of the public. Nor do I doubt that a lot of the people going through this data are zealous about protecting this country.

The problem is trust.

If you have an administration who understand constitutional limits and respect them, then even such programs as these can, in time of war, be tolerated with suspicion and oversight.

But we have an administration that has already used the IRS as a weapon against political enemies great and strong. We’ve seen Susan Rice & Jay Carney sent out to mislead and deceive (knowing or unknowingly) the general public. We’ve seen the administration named reporters as co-conspirators to terror. We’ve seen IRS commissioners take the fifth, and the attorney general dissemble and dodge.

And we’ve seen all of this happen at a time when said administration is taking over control of the healthcare system while trying to disarm Americans INSISTING they will not keep a registry.

Some people can be trusted with these kinds of powers, some can’t. This administration has clearly demonstrated they can’t.

And perhaps it cements a basic rule, Don’t give a power to one administration that can’t be trusted to all of them.

I would add that I believe the people involved directly in the clandestine world are, by and large, patriotic, circumspect, and extremely careful about not violating civil rights. But the people above them in government – our elected officials on both sides- have almost never proven themselves to be worthy of this sort of trust and power.